


I betrayed myself when I let others have their way (but the sound of my heart pounding tells me there’s still hope)

by DisplacedWarrior



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Angie/past relationships, F/F, endgame cartinelli is life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-13 16:33:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4529121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DisplacedWarrior/pseuds/DisplacedWarrior
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angie learns how to pick her battles wisely over the years but sometimes old habits are hard to break.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I betrayed myself when I let others have their way (but the sound of my heart pounding tells me there’s still hope)

**Author's Note:**

> So this has been sitting in my documents since February, sometime around the first week Agent Carter aired I discovered that Lyndsy Fonseca kissed a girl in a movie and promptly dug up and watched remember the daze, shout-out to [addams-beineke](http://addams-beineke.tumblr.com/) for putting together this [ compilation ](http://addams-beineke.tumblr.com/post/126492088527/a-rough-cut-of-every-significant-scene-in-remember/)because I sat through the whole damn movie for less than 5 minutes of relevant footage ~~I regret nothing~~ still I fell head over heels for Lyndsy's angsty baby gay Dawn in her 90's flowery dress and docs with her zero chill and I just..I just can't okay. Basically watching this gave me ALLLL of the babydyke Angie feels and I knew I had to write something and well the following is what happened. It totally spiraled and got away from me like pretty much everything I ever attempt to write and I might take another shot at it at some point because seriously 'so being in love isn't a reason?" gets me every damn time and just reduces me to a sniffling mess where I just repeat 'let me love you' while awkwardly petting my computer screen....so yeah....
> 
> Evidently I'm incapable of writing pure angst when it comes to my precious cinnamon roll Angie like I tried I really did but the fluffy ending got written well before the middle as if my muse wanted to make sure I didn't try any irreversible funny business. 
> 
> Also there is one line that implies intended sexual assault. It's non-graphic and does not happen so I don't think it warrants the ao3 rape/non-con warning however I wanted to note that it is there just in case it could be triggering to anyone.

As a child there was but one hour a week Angela Martinelli managed to sit still. That hour being mass on Sunday. At any other given time her legs would bounce, her feet would kick, her fingers would tap, or her nose would twitch. Stillness did not come easy to little Angie, but she had learned the hard way that fidgeting during church lead to lectures.  
  
Lectures just meant more time where she wasn’t supposed to move.

So on Sundays Angie sits quietly her only movements echoing those of her mother and the congregation. When she feels like she might squirm or yawn she focuses on the choir at the front of the church. 

This particular day a woman noticeably younger than the surrounding nuns steps forward for a solo. Angie's never seen her before, wonders why she’s dressed a bit different from the others.

Then the woman starts to sing and Angie stops thinking all together. The voice wraps around Angie and for the first time she doesn’t feel restless.

After church Angie asks her parents if the “pretty nun is an angel ‘cause all the colored windows show angels glowing and that’s gotta be why my chest felt all warm, right?”  
  
Her blue eyes are wide and earnest as she stares up at her parents awaiting an answer. 

She hears her name called from across the street and she turns missing the look that passes between her parents. Question forgotten she feels the tug of freedom. She only looks to her parents for permission before bouncing off to play with her friends.

She doesn’t know she said something she shouldn’t have.

***************

Angie favors brightly colored ribbons to hold back her golden curls. The flashes of color make her easy to identify among the children running amok through the streets of Brooklyn. She thinks nothing of getting her favorite dress muddy. Climbing trees and fire escapes with abandon or chasing strays near the train tracks. It’s commonplace to find Angie at the center of all the mischief the neighborhood boys get into.

She comes home covered in dirt, sporting scuffed shoes and scraped elbows, with bruises on her shins. Her mother scolds her but her father just shakes his head at her antics. He says she reminds of him of himself when he was little, just off the boat from Italy.

After the children are asleep Angela’s mother frets over her youngest daughter’s behavior and pleads with her husband to put a stop to it. “Lei è come il vento” he tells her, “we cannot pin her down.”

He recalls his first years in New York with a particular fondness. He was young enough when he arrived that to his peers different didn't yet mean bad. A shared language wasn't an insurmountable obstacle when there was mischief to make and playing to be done. Different would matter one day though. And those youthful memories of belonging, of freedom would be all that sustained him for a while. He has a feeling his precious baby girl will need that foundation herself someday.

Her mother pretends to have no idea why that might be.

****************

School doesn't tame Angie the way her mother hopes it will. She gets into fights on the playground because she will claw at any boy who makes the other girls cry. 

She bites the kid who tried to make Ruthie eat worms and head-butts Michael the notorious hair puller.

By the time she's seven she can parrot her mother's lectures on being a proper lady, is used to bearing the mark of Sister Barbara’s cane. When her father gets home from work he tells her she should listen to her mother and behave like a young lady.

Later though he'll come to her room and ask why she felt the need to fight this time. She treasures these moments. No other adult cares about the why. She's never gotten into a fight for the wrong reasons but her dad makes her promise to try and use her words next time.

Tells her that sometimes being safe means keeping your head down entirely.

He still corrects the technique of her right hook.

Her ma becomes an expert of getting blood out of clothes.

Angie makes a habit of coming home grinning triumphantly through split lips. Her eyes twinkling like stars against bruises that turn the color of the night sky.

It'll be years before Angie puts together the gradual shift from gratitude to something darker in the eyes of the girls she'd fight for.

Around the same time she'll figure out what the butterflies in her stomach and the way words get caught in her throat mean.

In grammar school they’ll teach her math and spelling. Religion and history. She notices they teach more than these subjects though. Silent lessons such as to speak only when spoken to. The appropriate way to show affection and to whom. To be demure, a proper young lady. To be caged.

She learns to read what lies behind people’s eyes, what goes unsaid when people speak.

Like the time she was in the main office holding a bag of frozen peas to her face, when one of the younger nuns came in to deliver a message. The sister approached Angie gently running her fingers over the bruise beginning to appear. She asked what happened but Angie had turned bright red and barely managed to squeak out an answer. 

After the nun leaves Angie finds herself on the receiving end of some cryptic sermon about sin and heathens.

It's a while yet before she’s able to grasp all the things that were not being said.

She’ll observe the way the older nuns keep certain candidates separated from the school and the young impressionable girls. And when she has to do an errand for Sister Barbara over at the rectory and runs into one such candidate, she’ll have another puzzle piece for down the road.

One day while she’s in the corner of a bar that is only not illegal on a technicality, she’ll glance up at her reflection. In that moment her eyes will not her own. She’ll be lost in a memory. Many years later and that look will be still burned into her.

It was supposed to be a simple delivery of paperwork. But when Angie’s fingers brushed against (not yet) sister Mary Robert’s the hitch in her breath was audible. At the time Angie offered up a rare and ultimately futile prayer the other woman hadn’t heard it. Now it's no longer the jolt of electricity Angie remembers about that moment.

It’s the broken, knowing gaze that held Angie captive.

One she didn’t understand then.

Under the bar’s dim lighting, clutching a drink in her hand she’ll wish away the searing pain of comprehension.

They teach her the meaning of the word postulant but she learns much later that not all those who take the veil do so willingly.

She’ll learn these unspoken things and more but Angie’s never been one to follow blindly or go down without a fight.

**************

In high school Angie spends most days after school as well as the weekends in the garage her dad owns. Oil and grease darken her hair nowadays instead of dirt. 

Her mother disapproves of course but at least when Angie’s helping her dad on cars she’s staying out of trouble.

Mostly.

One of her brothers will probably take over the shop one day which is fine by Angie, she enjoys the work but doesn't want it to be her future. Not that it could be. Her dad grumbles though because she took to the nuts and bolts of fixing cars faster than any of her brothers.

Angie doesn't get into nearly as many fights as she did when she was younger. She’s learned to pick her battles wisely over the years.

More or Less.

She’s sneaking a cigarette behind the bleachers when she over hears James bragging to his goons. The smoking is a habit she thinks is probably bad despite its popularity but then the rebellion is in the little things. She’s about to leave because James is among her least favorite people, when she hears him say that tonight’s the night Kate is gunna give it up.

Whatever it takes.

It’s the meaning behind the words and it’s the tone of his voice and Angie well... Angie sees red.

What happens afterwards is kind of a blur, she knows she came out swinging. James' got a broken jaw as well as a few other body parts to attest to that. But he wasn't alone and while most of the other guys would claim they’d never hit a girl. None of them had ever really considered Angie to be one. At least not while fists were flying.

It’s a testament to how scrappy Angie is that she comes out of the scuffle mostly intact. Nothing broken at least.

She thinks that might change when her Ma finds out she’s been suspended.

Again.

By the third day into her week long suspension she’s going stir crazy. Laundry's done, dishes are washed, trash's been taken out, she’s cleaned places that haven’t seen the light of day in ever, probably. She’s done basically every chore ever assigned to her and her siblings and things that never are like cleaning the damn light fixtures.

Hell she even tuned and polished the piano in the basement apartment.

So when she hears the loud backfiring of a truck which turns out to be a moving truck parked next door, she decides to cut her loses and head down to the garage before her ma ropes her into baking something for the new neighbors.

Lectures be damned.

She’s lost track of time tinkering under a car the boys in the shop said would never run again.

She figures everyone’s gone to lunch ‘cause it’s been a while since someone made a remark about her wasting time on that hunk of junk.

She’s lost in the hum of a motor off in a corner, the tings and clanks of her tools and the ever present smell of gasoline.

So when the timid, “Excuse me I’m looking for Angela, they said she’d be back here but well I don’t see her.” enters her consciousness Angie startles violently resulting in the stiches above her eye splitting open. 

She’s swearing impressively as she scrambles out from underneath the car. Trying to stop the blood flow that’s currently blinding her.

She manages to find a clean enough rag. And when she can finally see again she turns to give the cause of her troubles a piece of her mind.

She doesn’t get past opening her mouth though because standing by the opening of the garage is one of the most beautiful girls Angie’s ever seen. The sunlight filters in from behind her, bouncing off her dark hair, surrounding her in an ethereal glow. Angie likens the image to one of them scenes from that trashy dime store novel she definitely did not read. 

The girl’s eyes are a bit too wide, the spot of color in her cheeks a bit too dark.

It’s then Angie realizes just how colorful her previous words had been.

Angie figures she ought to say something soon if for no other reason than the girl seems to have noticed all the blood, which is worse than it looks honest and seems to be paling rather rapidly. Her eyes are still too wide but she's started to lean forward, her concerned expression now tinged with an edge of panic.

“Angie.” It comes out too high pitched, a bit harsh before being swallowed in the cluttered space.

And Angie wants to bang her forehead into her hand but figures it’s damaged enough for the time being.

So she forges on against the furrow in the other girl’s brow, “Only the nuns call me Angela, and my ma, usually when I’m trouble” her mouth quirks involuntarily on the word trouble. 

At the same time the mystery girl seems to gain quite a bit of color back into her cheeks.

Curious Angie thinks, what she says is “Ya got a name?”

The girl does have a name. (It’s Sarah Jane). She also has reason for being there. (She has Angie’s homework.) Heck there’s even a reason for her having said homework. That moving truck from earlier? Turns out Sarah Jane’s her new neighbor.

Angie misses most of this relevant information the first time around, lost as she is staring at the garage’s other occupant. Somehow she manages pull herself together enough to offer up some help unpacking.

Sarah Jane graciously accepts. It’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship, is what her ma would say. Angie knows enough nod and smile to the misclassification. When Sarah Jane takes her hand underneath table Angie finds the words don’t chafe nearly as bad.

She takes Sarah Jane down to a spot just beyond the train tracks where she goes to feed the local strays. She figures it’s a bit penance for bothering them as a kid. Plus the animals don’t judge so they already make better company than most of the people she knows. She tends to keep that opinion to herself.

She introduces each mangy mutt and flea-ridden cat by the names she’s dubbed them. At some point during her enthusiastic pointing she had grabbed Sarah Jane’s hand to pull her along. Neither one of them lets go. They end up sitting against the wall of a tunnel along the tracks.

Angie leans over and plants a kiss on the corner of the other girl’s mouth. Sarah Jane places a hand against Angie’s face and brings their lips together.

Angie feels that fleeting of restlessness again while they explore with hands and mouths.

She’s heard girls describe kisses as fireworks exploding, as the earth spinning. She asked her older brother’s girlfriend once what kissing felt like, hoping the other girl assumed the bright red in her cheeks was embarrassment alone. Vera told it felt like soaring. But pressed into Sarah Jane Angie felt grounded.

They go to the movies and hold hands in dark, stealing kisses like every other couple their age. During free periods they curl up together in partially hidden corner of the school library no one ever ventures to. They order one milkshake with two straws at the luncheonette and laugh off the look the waitress gives them. They listen to records in their rooms and sway to the music. It’s all terribly cliché and Angie loves every second.

They use one set of prejudices to hide from another. No one looks twice at two young girls walking arm or accompanying one another to the restroom. No one questions their frequent sleepovers.

Some nights they hold each other close and talk in whispers of what the future could hold for them. Angie dreams of a little house away from prying eyes. She dreams of sharing a life with Sarah Jane. She never much liked the way the word wife made her stomach turn. Other girls talked of marriage with stars in their eyes but to Angie it sounded like being buried alive.

She looks into Sarah Jane’s eyes and thinks I want to marry that girl. It’s foolish but for the first time the word wife gives her good butterflies instead of nausea.

She cries in Sarah Jane’s arms that night for an impossible dream. She never mentions what caused the tears, simply leans in and kisses with every ounce of her being. Like maybe if she loves hard enough, wants it bad enough they can transcend realms. They’re breathing hard when they pull apart, foreheads leaning together.

Angie hopes Sarah Jane can read the silent promises in her eyes. She’ll find a way. It’s a solemn vow made only inside her own heart. For now she only leans in for another kiss.  
  
But Angie dreams. They’re the lofty dreams of young love and everything is perfect.

Until it’s not.

No one was supposed to be home, that included the two half-naked girls in Sarah Jane’s bedroom. But as these things tend to go something terribly important but ultimately inconsequential was forgotten. Which led to the unexpected return trip to the supposedly empty house. This naturally morphed into an investigation of a conspicuous thump from the upstairs of said ‘empty’ house.

And that led to all hell breaking loose.

There was screaming and yelling and a sharp crack as Sarah Jane's father smacked Angie across the face. Angie was still in shock when she was seized by the arm and hauled next door barely managing to snag her shirt in the process. 

She doesn’t think she’s ever been this terrified in her life. She’s practically thrown into her house amidst the threats and profanities being spewed from the mouth of her girlfriend’s enraged father.

Her ma’s out to the store and her father’s just home from the garage. She’s actually kind of glad for that or she would be if she weren’t so numb. It seems as if the yelling goes on for hours but she tunes it all out and tries to come up with a plan. 

Her father comes up later, he looks at her with sad eyes and says his platitudes about the safety of keeping her head down. She chokes back tears and rage and no small margin of relief that she isn't being sent away to be fixed. She counts herself lucky to have such unconditional love. She resents the rarity of it out in the world.

She comes up with the only plan that makes sense. Later she’ll concede it was about as well thought out as Romeo and Juliet’s ill-conceived plotting. At least in her tragic love story no one died. In her darkest moments she’ll wonder if the fictional characters actually got the better deal.

Essentials packed and night long since fallen she makes her move.

It’s isn’t the first time she’s climbed out her window and she knows the way well. She moves easily despite the darkness, taking the fire escape up to the roof. The gap between the buildings is narrow enough to jump. And she does so without much thought to the many feet separating her from the concrete below. 

She scales down the opposite wall and shimmies over to a familiar window. She’s half expecting Sarah Jane’s father to be sitting in her room keeping watch but he isn’t.

There’s just Sarah Jane sitting on her bed hugging her knees to her chest and just like that Angie can breathe again. She rushes over, thoughts tumbling out of her mouth too fast to finish a sentence “Thank god you’re okay, I was so worried—your dad was so—look it ain’t much but I’ve got some money—we just gotta—we can—

“Angie.” Sarah Jane cuts her off and Angie flinches because the inflection is all wrong it’s hollow and bitter. 

Wasn’t it only hours ago her name fell from the same lips like a prayer?

Angie of course forges on because she can fix this. Has to fix this. She opens her mouth but Sarah Jane beats her to it “They’re sending me away. To a convent so I can atone for my sins.”

There’s something clawing in Angie’s throat, she’s barely able to push the words out but she has to because what they have isn’t a sin. It can’t be. It’s one of the few things in life she’s sure about no matter what anyone says.

“You don’t have to. We can run away. Figure things out, it’ll be hard but we can do it. Together.” She’s pleading now but somehow it didn’t occur to her that Sarah Jane wouldn’t be willing to go.

“There’s no reason for me to go with you, you should leave. If my father finds you in here again —

And Angie wants to scream and shake her, because isn’t being in love a reason?

But the words die in her throat because Sarah Jane carries on “There’s no future for us, there never was.”

Ice travels down Angie’s spine and breathing is harder than it was a few seconds ago. But she doesn’t know how to let this go, the love she has thrumming strong in veins despite it all.

So she goes in for a kiss, maybe if she could just but Sarah Jane moves backwards arms stretching out to push her away. Angie searches the eyes of the girl she loves but they’re lacking the warmth and light she adores. All that’s reflecting back is her own tortured gaze.

Angie knows about fighting. Knows this is one she’s already lost. Still when she hears the whispered “Just go” something in her chest shatters. 

She stumbles back, heads blindly for the window. Then she’s running, she can’t recall how she got on the ground but the pavement shifts to gravel as she skids to the train tracks.

She runs until she reaches the tunnel. She beats her fists against the wall and she finally screams. She screams at Sarah Jane. She screams at the world. She screams at god. She screams until her voice is hoarse and her arms are numb from punctuating each accusation into the concrete.

She collapses into a heap and sobs.

She breaks down, nearly drowning in the tears of first heartbreak. She cries for what’s lost and what will never be. She cries until she has nothing left, until she can’t differentiate the stiffness of blood dried and smeared from her caked on tears.

And then she picks herself up.

The walk back is a lesson in fortitude. She picks up the pieces she dropped along the way and reassembles them with every step.

They don’t fit like they used to.

When she gets home she wipes off the blood and the grime and bandages her hands.  
  
She wishes there was as easy a fix for her heart.

In the morning she’ll tap on her mother’s door and ask her to teach her how to do her make-up.

It was never high on her list of priorities before. Another rebellion.

Her mother is ecstatic and of course she will. She pretends not to notice the pain lurking behind her daughter’s eyes or the bandages adorning her hands. The same way she pretended not to hear the gossip on her way home from the store the day before.

Angie decides at that moment, sitting in front of her mother’s vanity that she’s going to be an actress. She builds her up mask under the careful eye of her mother, gaining confidence with every brush stroke. All the while thinking that if she’s gunna be forced to live a lie, she’s damn well going to make a profit off it.

When they finish Mrs. Martinelli looks at her daughter in the mirror. Angie beams. There is no longer any trace of pain in her freshly lined eyes. Her ma swallows the lump in her throat and hugs her Angela harder than she ever has.

“Mi dispiace bambina mia.”

It’s the closest she’ll ever get to acknowledgment.

***************

Angie puts on her eyeliner like war paint and imagines the bright red covering her lips is the blood of her enemies.

She determines the glimmer in her eye is a bit too feral for proprieties sake. So she adjusts.

Perfects.

Coral becomes her default lip color.

If anyone notices the day Sarah Jane stopped coming to school, seemingly disappears even though her family hasn’t moved is the same day Angie the pod person shows up. They never mention it.

Angie spends her last year and a half of high school keeping her head down. She stops using her fists entirely and wields what she isn’t meant to see as a weapon. 

She smiles too bright and feigns confusion at the appropriate times. She starts dating Paulie the butcher’s son. He’s dim but sweet and doesn’t mind that she won’t let him get past first base. He’s a good catholic boy after all who thinks she’s a good catholic girl. 

Under different circumstances she might even feel a little bit bad that when she kisses him she’s thinking of softer lips and more delicate features.

**************

  
America's involvement with the war has been brewing for some time but the reality of draft orders still come as a shock. Things had been bad for those easily identifiable as Italian, just last week she called out in her father's native tongue trying to corral some of her younger cousins out of the street and been spat on.

It was easily the hardest test of her self-control since she decided to outwardly play by society's rules. And truly that was tame compared to the consequences of tensions growing progressively worse every day.

As the neighborhood slowly empties of half it's population Angie tries not to hold on to the resentment. Evidently it was all well and good to treat the Italian- _American_ (she likes to emphasize that last part) population like dirt but still expect them to die overseas wearing an American uniform. 

They were good enough to die but not to be safe, sometimes even free in their own damn homes thousands of miles away from the front.

It's an out of body experience watching Paulie down on one knee, cheap ring shimmering in the sun. 

She's seen this scene play out more times then she count over the last few weeks. Young man decked out in army greens, grins up hopefully at young woman hand clutched to her chest at the proffered offering. He'll slip the ring on her ringer, sometimes they seal it with a kiss or he picks her up and spins her around clinging to some last bit of hope and light before he charges head long into darkness. The reaction varies but the answer is always the same.

She just follows the script.

Paulie slips the ring on her finger and she has to shake the clink of a prison gate slamming from her mind. She allows the tears to fall, with her artfully crafted smile not a soul can tell she wasn't shuddering out tears of joy.

He ships out hours later and the relief churns into guilt, sour in her stomach.

*************

Business is slow at her father's shop and Angie once again finds herself shoving down the resentment, with her brothers gone she searches for a job to help keep her family fed.

With most of the men off to war it's one of the easiest things she's ever done. The Navy Yard still employs thousands of men but now there's upwards of five thousand women as well. 

She spends hours surrounded by nothing but women wielding fire and bending steel to their will. Angie thinks this might just be what heaven is like.

She squashes down the thought, not because it's sacrilegious but because she knows it can't last.

Somehow as the months pass more and more of her family get crammed into her tiny childhood home. She's sharing a room with her aunt and five younger cousin's when she decides she's had enough. 

It'll give them more space and one less mouth to feed, she'll still send back half her wages to help them out.

She finds a roommate and a crappy apartment closer to the Navy Yard and she wouldn't trade it for the world.

She and Millie eat lunch together most days. The ring on Angie's finger granted her access to a club she most certainly never wanted to be a part of. The first day of work she was beckoned over to a table of housewife wannabes.

She lasts a singular lunch break and that's only because she decided it would be good practice for future roles.

In reality she can't stand how these particular women want nothing more than the war to be over, not for any desire to see suffering come to an end but because they simply aren't anything without their boys overseas. Their dreams include children, white picket fences and serving their husbands. 

Angie tries not to be sick.

Millie gives her a reprieve as they spend subsequent lunches talking about their personal hopes and dreams, fabricated through Angie's mask though they may be they're still much closer to the truth than any of the drivel she finds spilling from her lips in other company. 

Angie regrets accepting Paulie's proposal everyday, she knows a few girls who accept any proposal that comes their way from desperate soldiers shipping out at the break of dawn. These girls say the boys just need something to fight for, to keep them warm on the cold lonely nights. They see no harm in it, in fact they consider it to be a disservice not to accept.

Angie is not like these girls and the guilt burns hot in her veins. She stops herself from sending a dear John letter almost everyday. 

Millie is actually the one to pitch getting an apartment. She's desperate to escape her overbearing parents and Angie jumps at the chance to move from her own overcrowded home.

They've been growing closer and living together pushes them over that final edge. There's only one bed but they play off an opposite shift living situation if anyone asks(they rarely do). 

Millie's mother has her suspicions having dropped by unannounced one too many times but being free for the first time in her life has made Millie reckless.

Millie often plays with Angie's engagement ring. It causes Angie's throat to tighten but Millie likes to think it shields them entirely from scrutiny. Angie knows better but is reluctant to break the spell.

Angie frets but Millie soothes her fears with gentle kisses and wandering hands. 

Angie starts wearing dark pink lipstick so no one can tell she's wearing a different shade after a joint trip to the bathroom during a smoke break. It's the tiniest crack in her mask but one that will cost her.

Angie's been working at the shipyard long enough to know that when the shift supervisor heads out to the work zone with two solemn soldiers trailing behind. Well someone's life is about to fall apart.

She just never expected it to be hers. 

Not like this at any rate.

She falls to her knees the tears surprising her in their intensity. The dock grows silent, they call it respect but it's a mockery. Half of those present are simply thanking god it's not me while the rest watch the way one can't tear their eyes away from a train-wreck. 

The one thing they all share is assumption that Angie is grief-stricken.

The reality is more like guilt-ridden. She was so consumed with thoughts of getting herself out of the engagement she never stopped to really think about Paulie being in an active war-zone.

As far as Angie's concerned she might as well have pulled the trigger herself.

They send her home early and she stumbles into their tiny kitchen apartment pale and shaking. Millie is sat at the table, the sight of her brings Angie up short. 

Why does she look like Angie feels?

It would seem her mother picked today of all days to accuse Millie of deviant behavior, to wave the threat of institutionalization.

The timing is all wrong and the telegram clutched in Angie's sweaty palms becomes the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back.

The fight is explosive ending in Millie storming out of the apartment. She doesn't come home that night and Angie spends hours pacing around their tiny apartment like a caged tiger. 

In the morning Angie drags herself to work. She pulled out all the stops that morning the humanity she exudes, the greatest masterpiece she's created thus far.

Millie never turns up for her shift. When Angie stumbles home for the second day in a row she freezes in the doorway.

The air shifts wrong and the hairs on the back of Angie's neck rise. The drawers are all missing half their contents and there are empty spaces on shelves like missing teeth in her grandfather's smile.

She didn't even bother saying goodbye. Months later Angie stumbles across a announcement in the society pages.

Mrs. Mildred Mayfair expecting first child with husband Arnold Mayfair residing in Armonk,NY.

Angie quits the docks. The whispers she can handle but the peace she finds in the molten steel is more than she feels she deserves. 

Besides she figures she oughta start paying her dues sooner rather than later.

Broadway is calling her name and it's about time this charade of a life payed some bills.

***************

  
She had been right about paying her dues. She tries not to let the failed auditions piling up get her down.

She had settled into The Griffith nicely, Ms.Fry's zero tolerance policy for men above the first floor is a godsend for someone like her. A respectable excuse to deter male suitors and she finds she isn't alone in the respite. Ms. Fry's moral high ground has rather ironically attracted certain types women to the residence. Angie's even made some good friends.

The L&L Automat is about as soul-sucking a place as they come. She can't say it doesn't keep her acting skills sharp though. 

She's on hour twelve of a double shift she picked up so Mary could take care of her sick kid. There's a grade-a jerk who's been making the past half-hour hell, the new girl spilled an entire tray of food onto Angie and the coffee maker's on the fritz.

She mumbles to some indeterminate higher powers that she better have something good coming her way and it's at that moment the front door opens an Angie's pretty sure an angel just walked in.

She concedes if God exists he's got some twisted sense of humor.

She makes herself as presentable as possible and saunters over to take the woman's order. Their eyes meet and Angie instantly knows while this woman's beauty is ethereal she is no angel.

The woman's cheekbones could cut glass, Angie studies the woman's perfectly arched eyebrows, the flawless complexion. 

Her perfect blood red lips draw Angie's attention and keep it there. She flashes a grin and Angie suppresses a shudder because she knows most people are too stupid recognize how effortlessly those teeth could rip out their jugulars. 

Angie recalls the early days of perfecting her own mask, wiping off the bright red lipstick so she wouldn't think about wearing the blood of her enemies. She is looking at a woman who owns the concept.

Angie can see it in this woman's eyes the feral quality Angie so painstakingly eliminates from her own gaze. This woman has secrets under her skin and steel in her spine. Her mask is caliber of craftsmanship Angie envies. 

The woman opens her mouth and the accented voice would have made teenage Angie's knees buckle. Adult Angie's features don't give her away but there's no denying the slow steady thump in her heart that Angie knows is going to get her in all sorts of trouble.

The months pass and 'Margret but please call me Peggy Carter' is now a regular but also somewhat of a friend. Angie spends hours between tables trying to break through Peggy's thick walls. Peggy thinks she's a master of deception but Angie knows intimately it's because most people don't believe there's deception to be had.

Misdirection becomes so much easier when no one's paying attention to begin with.

The more she gets to know Peggy the more she realizes that Peggy knows this too. She harbors the tiny flame of resentment the way Angie does when someone mutters something derogatory regarding her last name under their breath or hisses out dyke when she forcefully turns down unwanted advances.

Peggy speaks in veiled language, half-truths practically code, Angie wonders if Peggy with all her usual skills of discernment realizes Angie has at least a portion of the cipher. 

Peggy doesn't. For all her ire at the world underestimating her abilities sometimes she herself misses the signs in those around her.

******************

They grow closer still. Angie advances and Peggy makes strategic retreats. It isn't until Peggy starts to let Angie in she finally notices Angie has walls that rival her own. It's this that makes Peggy realize how hard she's let herself fall without realizing it.

Angie is still smarting from another of Peggy's brush offs, her shift passing slower than usual due to her mood. Angie is midway through throwing out the trash when Peggy comes careening into the alley behind the diner, five angry bleeding men on her heels. 

She makes the mistake of turning over her shoulder to gauge the distance between her and her pursuers. Angie tries to call out a warning but it's too late, Peggy's heel catches on a break in the concrete sending her flying. 

She lands in a heap across from where Angie is standing and Angie doesn't think she just barrels forward throwing herself into the fray.

Angie manages to knock one guy out with the trash can lid and another with a solid right hook. It gives Peggy enough time to rise to her feet quickly dispatching two more of the goons with a lead pipe she retrieved from her time sprawled on the ground. 

It leaves one guy left towering menacingly over them both.

Angie knows she should be quaking in her low cut heels but adrenaline is coursing hot through her veins and Peggy is by her side so she just smirks and kicks the guy square in the nuts.

Hard.

He falls to his knees and she shifts to the side using her movement to shove him towards Peggy who lands a solid blow to his head knocking him out cold.

She's still grinning when she turns to see the look on Peggy's face, it brings memories to the surface she'd rather forget and rapidly cools the blood in her veins. 

Peggy looks angrier than Angie's ever seen her. It makes her swallow hard as she fights down the rising panic, the urge flee or cry. Memories flash tinged with knowledge she didn't have in her youth.

“What on earth were you thinking Angie?!” God is this what it would have come to if she had kept on trying to defend the neighborhood girls. She suspects it might have been, under different circumstances but instead of the disgust she expected to accompany the anger, as Peggy prowls closer voice still raised and eyes flashing. Angie catches a glimpse of something else burning in her gaze.

“Lord, you could have been hurt or worse.” Peggy's voice breaks and Angie doesn't have time to for her brain to catch up to this development before she finds herself being slammed into the wall and kissed thoroughly. 

Peggy pulls back and Angie doesn't even try to fight the dopey smile curling her lips.

“Where did you learn to fight like that?” Angie fights through the pleasant daze enough to reply.

“I never liked bullies.” Peggy's eyes go wide for a split second a strangled noise tumbling from her lips. Then she's laughing like a mad woman even as tears stream down her cheeks. Angie doesn't know quite what to make of it but Peggy grabs her by the uniform pulling her in for another kiss.

Angie can taste tang from the tears still falling mixing with the blood dripping sluggishly from a cut above Peggy's eye, they're standing in a dirty back alley surrounded by unconscious men.

There's nothing about this situation from the timing to the person that should feel 'right' at least not in the opinion of most.

Angie doesn't give a shit, all she knows is she's never felt more anchored in her life.

She expects Peggy to avoid her after that. Pretend the fight, the kiss, none of it even happened but Peggy as always surprises her. She turns up at Angie's door that night with a bottle of scotch and the whole unfiltered truth. 

She tells Angie about her work and about her extra curricular activities to save her friend _the_ Howard Stark. She talks about her life and how much she actually genuinely misses the war. 

Angie holds her as she talks about her fallen solider. The scrawny boy she fell in love with who had a smart mouth and an unwavering sense of justice. The one who couldn't talk to women and didn't like bullies. How her irreverent Brooklyn boy turned into Captain America and sacrificed his life to save them all.

She tells Angie about the trail of death in her wake, how the ones she's cared for most always seem to pay the price of her mistakes.

She leaves nothing out because she needs Angie to understand just how serious the danger is if she stands any chance of surviving it.

Peggy shows up every night after that. Sometimes it's long past when Angie has drifted off to sleep waiting for her return. Sometimes they talk, sometimes they do anything but. Mostly they sleep wrapped in each others arms.

It's messy and god knows they're playing with fire but then Angie always had an affinity for flames.

If you asked, Angie would say she never knew it could be like this which is why she sees it coming a mile away. She thinks about the silent vow she made to Sarah Jane and how it all fell apart. She was young and it wasn't within her control. She knows that now.

She makes a new vow just the same.

The pattern holds and everything is incredible.

Until it's not.

This time though with more years of understanding, she swears she'll see it through. If she has to move heaven and earth to do it.

***************

  
It's the longest week of Angie's life and sleep eludes her. Somehow after years of sleeping alone a few weeks is all it takes for Angie become used to Peggy's presence at her side.

But Peggy is god knows where, in who knows what kind of condition. Angie tries to find her only to be met with dead end after dead end.

In the end Angie expected the fall out to be so much worse.

Peggy shows up at Angie's door looking worse for wear but in one piece. Exhaustion and perhaps a bit of pain mar her features but she still looks so fucking beautiful and Angie doesn't think. She spent so many years being so fucking careful.

It only takes seconds to shatter everything she's built.

Angie leaps but Peggy isn't as steady on her feet as usual and Angie knocks them to ground in the hallway, their surroundings melting away as she sinks into Peggy's embrace.

At least until a scandalized voice breaks through their haze. They barely manage to collect all of Angie's things amidst the the 'well I never's' and shrieking about 'immoral deviant behaviors under MY roofs'. 

Angie had all but frozen barely able to keep it together enough to mechanically gather all of her belongings, all the while feeling a nonexistent draft, the echo of a landed hit well before the pain registered, the imprint of a long since faded bruise from large fingers digging into her arm.

They make it out to Jarvis' waiting car in record time as Ms. Fry continues to shout them out of the building. Peggy's surprised they aren't being chased off with a broom to be quite honest.

Although she supposes that would ruin the woman's image or at least that of the building.

Angie hasn't moved, is barely breathing, shows no sign of recognition to anything until Peggy slips her hand under Angie's palm, intertwining their fingers.

“I suppose it was a good thing I was coming to ask you to move in with me?” 

Jarvis ever the good butler ignores the borderline hysterical laughter from the backseat.

Living with Peggy is everything Angie imagined it would be.  
  
It's rushed breakfasts as they flow around each other in a hurry to get to their respective places of work. It's candlelit dinners when they're both home and food kept warm in the oven when one of them's not.  
  
It's dancing in their night clothes and putting a dent in Howard's sizable wine cellar. They worship each other's bodies, tracing old scars and mending invisible wounds. It's Angie's head in Peggy's lap while she memorizes a script and Peggy fills out paperwork.  
  
But it isn't just the good that Angie imagined. She's seen far too much in her short life to hold those kinds of delusions.  
  
So when she says it's everything she's imagined. It's also sleepless nights pacing the foyer because Peggy forgot to call again. It's cleaning up blood and stitching together wounds and 'don't you ever scare me like that again's'.  
  
It's occasional miscommunication. Peggy's stubborn pride and Angie's Italian temper.  
  
The first time Peggy storms out in the middle of an argument she comes back hours later calm and ready to talk but finds Angie an inconsolable mess in the same exact position she left her. Eventually Angie tells her about Millie and Armonk and the part of her that thought Peggy was never coming back.  
  
They know how to be good to each other and for each other but lord knows they also know how to make a mess of things.  
  
They work towards finding their balance, something Angie knows will take time.  
  
She doesn't fret though. She won't say it out loud, won't jinx it. It's not a promise or a vow like the ones she's made before. It's just something she knows, she feels it in the rhythm of her heart. They have forever to figure things out.

****************

  
Peggy returns to the SSR and Thompson is a surprisingly bearable interim chief. At least he is when they aren't having hushed screaming matches over pie at the L&L.

The entirely male employment at the office is proving to be a hindrance to their current operation, They need to send someone undercover but their target knows Peggy. No amount of blonde wigs or accent changing is going to make him forget her face anytime soon.

Peggy insists they should hire more female agents and Jack is coming up with increasingly ridiculous 'solutions' to avoid doing just that.

Angie wanders over when she sees Peggy rapidly reaching her boiling point. Angie doesn't particularly object to Peggy killing the insufferable man but she's not about to get stuck cleaning up the mess.

She approaches the duo and can't resist asking him “How's gam gam these days Jackie-boy?” 

Thompson sputters while Peggy just manages to tamp down on her laughter. Unfortunately when Thompson recovers he's looking at Angie with a glint in his eye that Peggy does not like.  
  
At all.

Peggy violently objects to Angie's involvement in the operation and Thompson steamrolls on ahead. If anyone had actually asked Angie if she wanted to help out she would have said yes anyway. Not that it mattered.

The operation goes off without a hitch in no small part to Angie's stellar performance so Thompson lives to see another day.

Unfortunately for Peggy's nerves it plants a seed for Angie and she shifts her sights from the bright lights of Broadway to the murky world of espionage.

Peggy is not the least bit amused but she still works with Angie to further teach her self defense. She doesn't want to entertain Angie's new career goals but she also won't leave Angie defenseless should work follow her home.

Angie can hold her own in brawl but Peggy deals with trained killers and master fighters.

Jack doesn't get the permanent chief position much to everyone's surprise. His replacement is intolerable and Peggy finds herself back at square one. 

Howard for all his faults occasionally has impeccable timing. He brings his proposal for an organization to her and together they build SHIELD. 

Peggy has the final say in the picking of agents as Director but Howard is not without influence which is naturally why Angie brings her application to him first.

Peggy is of course utterly against it in the beginning. It leads to a fair number of fights around the penthouse even if they both understand where the other is coming from.

Peggy comes home from giving in her official resignation to the SSR to find a Leviathan agent skewered with a fireplace poker and Angie grinning like a cat that caught a canary.

“See told ya all those self-defense lessons ya been givin' me are paying off.”

Peggy knows she's lost the battle, _Agent_ Martinelli knows it too.

It’s the best job Angie never knew she could have. Her acting skills get put to good use and she gets to hit things again. Not to mention most days out of the week she gets to do indecent things to her boss during lunch.

It really is a pretty sweet gig.

She cycles through personas and disguises, she builds new masks and perfects the old. The way she lives her life of pretend shifts and in this new work she finds a freedom she quite frankly thought died on the train tracks in Bensonhurst a decade ago.

She walks through the door of the home she's made with Peggy. It's as the pretenses of the day fall away that she realizes she's found the freedom to be herself. 

Nowadays her smiles are still too wide but they aren't hiding anything underneath.

There is still a facade to keep of course, the kind of public persona she always imagined she would have as a famous starlet anyway. 

Angie's spent her entire life essentially living a lie but the older she gets the more she ponders about the sheer stupidity of people as a whole. 

Of course she and Peggy ironed out their story ages ago but it still shocked the hell out of Angie that people just believed it.

Angie became a widow, it was easy enough to come up with a marriage certificate and claim they eloped right before Paulie left. It had been a common enough occurrence at the time.

Peggy for her part had 'married' Angie's brother. They had two beautiful children before his tragic death led to Angie lending a hand in raising their children. 

So what if Tommy technically wasn't a twin and Donnie didn't exist. Working for a top secret government agency gave a gal plenty of resources. 

And if the children refer to Angie as ma instead of aunt well they were so young and it just sort of happened. Peggy is still mum and she doesn't mind so maybe everyone should just let it go.

They each embraced their 'widow' status opting to keep their rings on a symbol of their undying love.

Those closest to them always need to fight a smile when it comes up in conversation having attended the small ceremony where Peggy and and Angie exchanged those very rings pledging their undying love to each other.

Peggy keeps a photo of 'Donnie' on her desk and a photo of Angie in a locket around her neck. 

Peggy would never admit this to another living soul but Steve's memorial plaque knows that there a few missions Peggy only survived because the locket had fallen into the wrong hands and Peggy would rip out the still beating heart of the grim reaper itself if it meant keeping Angie safe. 

She becomes somewhat of legend. A terrifying force to be reckoned with who triumphs against insurmountable odds, laughs in the face of death and leaves no enemy alive.

Angie for her part garners her own legend status. Where Peggy's is built on her unmistakable presence Angie's is built completely by her lack of it.  
  
Angie is a master of deception and carrying out missions undetected. She becomes know as fantasma for she is like a ghost, covertly completing her objective leaving only few words of Italian fluttering on the wind and utter destruction in her wake. 

The tales turned to urban legend surrounding their cooperative efforts stopped more than a few plots before they were ever put into action.

*****************

They’ll be the first, it’s been decades since either of them officially worked for the government but some favors have no expiration date.

It’s not a big to do, they had a ceremony years ago. Had been married in their hearts for over 60 years though Angie was starting to think they wouldn’t live to make it 'official'. Neither one of them needed a piece of paper mind you. 

They already had matching rings and two of their grandchildren served as witnesses but the principal of the matter had Angie floating on air. There weren't many left who could understand the price of living a lie over something as human as love.

Later out of the eyes of the public Angie curls her hand into a fist. The pain in her hands now is arthritis and age but for a second she’s sixteen all over again hands raw and bleeding from beating a wall in heartbroken desperation. 

She chuckles which somehow turns into sobbing and then she’s clutching at Peggy burying her head into her wife’s neck.

Wife.

The smile breaks its way through the tears and suddenly she’s laughing again. She moves back still holding onto Peggy and just beams. Peggy looks slightly alarmed like she’s finally lost all of her marbles but she’s smiling too. She never could look at Angie’s grinning face and do anything but respond in kind.

Angie drags them over to the bed where they settle into each other and she talks about her first love and heartbreak. About her once impossible dream and a little part of her that mended today. One she hadn’t even realized was still fractured. 

She cackles about the ‘fuck you’ cards complete with newspaper clippings she plans on sending to a few choice meatheads.

The more grievous offenders had long since been taken care of.

Peggy just smiles softly tracing patterns against Angie’s palms, letting the chatter wash over her as she’s done for years.

She’s pulled from her revere as Angie angles her head slightly to look her in the eyes, “I love you.”

“I never tire of hearing you say that, darling. I find myself more besotted with you each day.”

“Shut up, English you talk too much” Peggy presses a kiss to Angie's mouth happy to do as her wife says.

**Author's Note:**

> lei è come il vento - she is like the wind  
> Mi dispiace il mia bambina- I'm sorry my baby  
> I did try asking my grandmother for translations and she was like that sounds right but I don't really know if she knew what I was actually talking about so any grievous errors are down to google translate and I would be more than happy'ta fix 'em.
> 
> So I'm hoping there was nothing too confusing when I touched on random Catholic things. I spent my entire school age life minus kindergarten in Catholic school so I'm really not the best judge on what's 'common knowledge' in that sense. In the beginning of the story the nun tiny Angie crushes on is technically not yet a nun hence the slightly different clothing, think Mary Robert in _Sister Act_ who while I used the name the character is not actually based off of and a postulant in this sense is a candidate for admission into a religious order. Those are the two main things I could think maybe needed clarification, but feel free to ask for clarification on anything else. 
> 
> Also I totally started this as I mentioned when agent carter first aired and I was super excited that other people were thinking about Angie knowing her way around an engine and how that took off in lots fic because I adore greasemonkey!Angie.
> 
> On another note I know it's been awhile but I promise 'Is it possible there are no coincidences?' should be updated soon.  
> In the mean time I hope ya'll enjoyed this one.


End file.
